msnbc.msn.com/id/11021093
It not only says Libby on the label, it also says top secret. Why Scooter wants to keep part of the trial out of the public eye. September 1, the president says, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," yet Homeland Security predicted to the White House that the levees might break four hours before the storm even hit. Speaking of warnings, Oprah Winfrey's producers got one about the rehab parts of "A Million Little Pieces." Who cut the Katie Holmes sex scenes out of her new film, Tom? And before we all go crazy over the pictures of Jack Abramoff with the president-Dana Milbank, perhaps this will refresh your memory. The CIA leak investigation, Plamegate, has roared back into the headlines, not because of the trial of the indicted White House aide Scooter Libby and the fact that it's scheduled to begin a week from Friday, but rather because of his efforts to change that schedule. Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, the government insists it has the right to review your e-mails or phone calls, but Mr Libby insists you should not have the right to hear about all the evidence in his trial, because he wants to introduce into the record classified material. Only days after the lawyers for the vice president's former chief of staff told a federal judge they want to subpoena journalists and news organizations for documents that might be related to the leak of a CIA operative's name, they were back in court, requesting to use classified evidence at Libby's trial. While the specifics of the filing themselves remain secret as well, this much we do know. Libby's lawyers have hinted they will want to disclose to a jury the nature of what the operative, Valerie Plame, did at the CIA, and that has created, as described today by the Associated Press, quote, "a highly secretive court process that could bog down the case." Case in point, more than four years after the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person thus far charged in this country in connection with the September 11 attacks, he has yet to go on trial, fights over classified information repeatedly delaying that prosecution. All of which kind of makes one wonder what would really happen should the Feds actually arrest anyone targeted as the result of the NSA domestic spying program, today being day two of the Bush administration's massive effort to sell that program to a wary public, an increasingly wary public. Carrying the torch today, the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, a key part of his argument that critics and news reports have misled Americans about how extensive the surveillance program really is. More than a dozen students in the audience at Georgetown University today, some of them in black hoods, turning their backs on Mr Gonzales in silence as he spoke, their wariness reflected in the latest polling from Gallup for "USA Today." Although still sharply divided, 51 percent responding now saying the administration was wrong in wiretapping without a court order, only 46 saying -- 46 percent, rather, saying right. Time now to call in "Washington Post" national political reporter Dana Milbank. DANA MILBANK, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Evening, Keith. Let's begin not with those photos, but with the maneuvering legally in the Scooter Libby case. If politics was football-and we can pretend for a moment the Washington Redskins are still in it, if that helps-would the refs need to call the Libby defense team on a-on some sort of delay-of-game penalty? I think you should look at it more of a coach's challenge. I mean, the delay of game would assume that Scooter would benefit in some way from stalling this. Now, it's possible it could get stalled beyond the 2006 elections, but it still stays in the news. And then you plant it right out there in time for the 2008 elections. So it's really a case of him trying to challenge the rules of the game here, hoping for a reinterpretation by the judge, or the referee, if you will, to try to allow the admission of information that will make his case a little bit stronger. OLBERMANN: But if we're talking-I mean, I'm not-no one's going to suggest that the level of secrecy of the material he wants is on that of the Moussaoui prosecution, but it-does it-how much of it-what sort of percentage parallel does it have to be to perhaps postpone the Libby trial past the 2008 elections? MILBANK: Can you imagine how many COUNTDOWN episodes we could do between now and then? We're going to be in court, or at least, I should say, Scooter's going to be in court next week. And we're going to get a pretty good indication from the judge right there, based on the questioning of where this thing is going. Now, it's not in the administration's interest, it's not in Scooter Libby's interest, it's not in Fitzgerald's interest to keep this going too terribly long. It's certainly not in the journalists' interests who are going to be dragged back in as witnesses in this. OLBERMANN: Let's move on to the fallout over these still-unreleased but hinted- at photographs of the president and the lobbyist Jack Abramoff together. The White House position regarding Abramoff has kind of evolved in the last few weeks or weeks. Now it's closer to, it isn't that hard to get your picture taken with the president. If that latter is the case, why not release the photographs themselves? Why not get ahead of the story and just get them out there and put your spin on them as they are released? MILBANK: Well, because then, Keith, instead of running this B-roll of Abramoff walking down the street or marching around in his fedora, you're going to be running that shot of the president standing there grinning with Jack Abramoff. So there's no question that it will be used in campaign ads against him, and for all sorts of nefarious purposes. Now, this is the same sort of thing that went on with the Clinton and the Lincoln Bedroom issue. There's all kinds of people who are trucked through the White House who get pictures. Now, have to remember, Jack Abramoff was a Pioneer, meaning he raised more than $100,000 for Bush. And this could obviously-whatever the real reason behind it, could look very bad. OLBERMANN: You're saying, basically, that in terms of photography, any Tom, Dick, and Dana can get their picture taken with the president. We kind of alluded to this in the opening of the program. Interested to know what it was you won here, the-then there's the annual Milbank Christmas card series, you and the president, both joined by your better halves. And then also there's the-yes, the-instead of where was Waldo, it's where's Dana and where's W in this? MILBANK: Well, Keith, I'm really not at liberty to say the true reasons behind this. And surely, I did a small amount of fundraising for the president, but I ... MILBANK: They're-this poor guy has something-I think there's something like 21 different holiday parties each December. He has to sit there in each one of these, stand there for a couple of hours and just shake hands time after time. He gets briefed beforehand, so he has to sort of rehearse. So he actually will remember things about a story you'd written, something about your wife, about your kids. There's this whole rigmarole with the camera set up, with the military people to call out who's coming, so he can prep for himself for this. This is perhaps the least attractive obligation of being the president, but-and certainly one of the very least attractive parts is having that particular holiday party for the journalists, who go out and hound you all year long, and then we all have to make nice and smile there at the end. The last thing, you mentioned this endless videotape of Jack Abramoff. We need to ask now how well you know Jack Abramoff, because, again, that fedora footage reveals at the end-I seem to recognize that gentleman coming through there. Or are there photos of you and Jack Abramoff and President Bush together? In fact, I managed to land myself in "The New York Times" on A-18 with Alito last week. I'm considering-and I'd like to make this offer tonight-if Halliburton or Pfizer or anybody would like to do some product placement, I'll be w...
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